As predicted, T-bills are tanking.
An economically inclined friend writes
If you just look at treasuries maturing after 2030, that’s a value of about $130 billion dollars notional, which got bid up to about $190 billion, and now have lost half that so $30 billion. You throw in treasuries issued with maturity after 2027, that’s a little over $50 billion in losses. So roughly Maddoff.
But if you want to be really scared, check out this graph of total debt as a percentage of GDP (from Matt Yglesias):
The same economically-inclined friend writes of this:
There’s no way out but an adjustment in standard of living.
Remember, an adjustment in standard of living doesn’t just mean that one of Ben Stein’s friends has to move to San Bernardino. It means people like a friend of mine with a disabled kid who just got laid off doing God knows what to get by. And I don’t delude myself that anyone I know is facing the worst of any of this.
The reason articles like Stein’s do the public a disservice is that they make it sound like the tragedy of this crisis is that a few people living beyond their means will have to eat a little shit. It’s a lot worse than that, and it affects plenty of people who weren’t raking in alimony and blowing it all on a shop that “has never come close to earning a dime”.
Update: But if the gold standard and deregulation won’t work, maybe the Sam Donaldson tax credit plan will.
Fucking idiot (Donaldson, not Krugman).
And, by the way, check out Cokie’s nonsensical assertion that the fact that unemployment is especially high in Michigan and Rhode Island is indicative of something (I’m not sure what). She says “it (unemployment) is already that in Michigan and Rhode Island” (at around 3:10). What does that have to do with anything?